By PV Special Investigator in Freetown.
One of the richest foreigners living in Sierra Leone today is Chief Tony Izabundu Chinyere, a Nigerian national. Nobody in the country can tell you with any certainty how Chief Tony (as this man is called) makes his money. But he is very rich all the same as reflected in the luxury cars and majestic mansion he owns in the west of Freetown among the residences of the country’s moneybags, top politicians, UN staff and diplomats.
Tony (photo), who is from eastern Nigeria, surfaced in Sierra Leone with the first appearance of Nigerian soldiers in the country in 1991 following an appeal for help from the late President Joseph Momoh to his friend and former military school classmate President (or military dictator ) Ibrahim Babangida at the start of the RUF war. A year later in 1992 Momoh was overthrown by the NPRC military junta. During all this time Tony was operating as a businessman in the country with strong connections with the Nigerian military establishment at home in Nigeria and in Sierra Leone.
He rose to prominence or the public became aware of him when he developed a close relationship with the NPRC military boys. Nobody can say what he did for the NPRC or the Nigerian troops in town but he became richer and richer as the days went by and today almost anybody who is somebody in Sierra Leone has met or talked to Chief Tony from some of the highest office holders to the lowest office messenger and man in the street.
Those who know him say Tony, who is said to own mansions in Nigeria and New Jersey (USA) is very friendly with a jovial happy-go-lucky disposition. "When Tony enters any office in Freetown he will not leave without "spraying" everybody with money," one office messenger told PV. "He (Tony) is a very generous and kind man," he added.
But a lot of educated Sierra Leoneans we spoke to are very suspicious of Tony or Nigerians like him in the country who tend to display wealth whose origins are not easily identifiable unlike other hard working Nigerians earning their living as bankers, insurance executives, shop owners etc. The recent huge fraud case in which Tony was involved seems to have justified these suspicions.
There are rumours in town that Tony and his fellows indictees will soon be freed after they would have "sprayed" with bribes the highly corrupt Sierra Leonean judiciary.
"Tony’s friends in Nigeria who include some top politicians and very senior military officers may try to put pressure on President Koroma who is currently on a visit to that country to free Tony, but I am pretty sure President Koroma will not entertain that kind of nonsense because the reputation of his government is at stake over that case," a well connected Nigerian businessman in Freetown told PV.
Nigeria and Sierra Leone presently have very good relations with both presidents and their wives on first name terms, but that can be very easily tainted by the activities in the country of people like Chief Tony Izabundu Chinyere.
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